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Our role as custodians and stewards of God’s earth is to protect and preserve the ecology and environment as best we can.

In this moment of transition, we will celebrate a different kind of new beginning: Tu BiSh’vat, the new year for trees. Tu BiSh’vat is an opportunity to celebrate the earth and to recommit ourselves, for another year, to environmental action.

Tu BiShvat is an opportunity to celebrate the earth and to recommit ourselves, for another year, to environmental action.

Tu BiShvat (Jewish Arbor Day) is the time of year when Israeli schoolchildren plant trees. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that a teacher instituted the tree-planting custom.

When a wildfire leveled my home when I was 20, I fell into a deep depression. Later, when I began to re-engage, I started to associate my emergence with Tu BiShvat.

This year, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Tu Bishvat (the Jewish "New Year of the Trees") both occur on January 21, 2019, and the 15^th of Shvat 5779.

Miraculously, a delicate network of threads is emerging amongst us, linking us heart to heart.

While we have been having a relatively warm winter in the United States, it cannot compare to what winter is like in Israel.  It is the rainy season there, the time of year that Israel greens up, with cooler temperatures and rain (which feels like a miracle every time I experience it) in between